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Saturday, July 18, 2009

Saturday

Rain has continued to fall for most of the morning, with one heavy burst around 04:30. The clear up post Thursday night’s torrential downpour continues. On the High Street some businesses are still closed, either still clearing up the mess or waiting for insurance assessors to arrive. The streets are awaiting a good clean and some drains are still blocked, but no sign of any work being carried out by the council.Flash floods such as those we experienced in Nairn late Thursday night, early Friday morning are impossible to predict, but planning for such events should be in place.Reports suggest that the telephone line to Highland Council’s Service Point in Nairn was almost impossible to get through to on Friday morning, and rather than an engaged tone callers received what sounded like a voice message for council employees rather than any useful information. Tec Services was also very difficult to reach.In these times when Broadband is deemed as important as water or electricity Highland Council’s web site remained devoid of any news or information with regard the flooding, here at the Gurn we did our best to research and publish what we thought might be relevant information for anyone needing help.The three pallets of sandbags available to the public from the Station Park depot had all gone by this morning, but no information as to when more might be available.A caller to Nairn Service Point on Friday morning was informed of the sandbags but when he said he was disabled was told there was no delivery service or anyone to help him. His house had flooded in the early hours of Friday morning.The doors to Nairn Service point were firmly closed as per usual for a Saturday morning, but taking the scale of the damage from the floods would it have been too much to have arranged for someone to be there today to offer help and advice?Money is tight within the council budget but it seemed they were far from prepared for the flooding, or if they were is the level of service we should now expect?We can only hope that we don’t see a repeat of Thursday night’s rainfall anytime soon!